Jeff Bezos is Now Worth $200 Billion

By Aditi Shukla '22

Jeff Bezos beat his own record with a net worth of $202 billion (Photo Credit: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

Breaking his own record, the world’s richest man, Jeff Bezos, became even more rich when valued on August 26. Bezos, the founder and CEO of Amazon, now has a net worth of $202 billion, making him the first man in history to cross $200 billion in wealth.

Bezos founded the company Amazon back in 1994, first gaining popularity due to its innovative technologies. Now, estimated at a total value of $1.14 trillion, it has become one of the dominating powers in its market. Bezos owns an 11.2 percent stake in Amazon, more than 57.2 million shares of Amazon stock, which leads to his abundance of wealth.

But how was the $202 billion estimated in the first place? The number comes from the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, which is a ranking of the world’s richest people that uses an analysis of their profile and every day trades to produce numbers on a daily business for these people. Bezos’s biggest asset comes from the US Amazon equity.

Bezos first became the richest man in the world back in 2017, his net worth reaching over $100 billion, surpassing Bill Gates who had held the title for 24 years. A lot of his wealth has come from just the past year, jumping around $85 billion since this January. Needless to say, despite the impact COVID-19 has had on the economy, Amazon has thrived.

Amazon is mainly an online company—this could be why it has had such a big increase this year, as the world due to quarantine has shifted to a more online world. In fact, not just Amazon, but some companies that are heavily online-based such as Zoom, Citrix, and Apple have also done well during the pandemic, which has led to an increase in the wealth of their CEOs as well. Thus, Bezos, along with many other CEOs have had a massive increase in recent wealth.